


to me, you are

by 0neType



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Angst, Dubious Consent, M/M, Possibly Unrequited Love, Self-Harm, Sibling Incest, Some Really Fucked Up Deaths, Time Loop, Torture, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-27
Updated: 2016-04-27
Packaged: 2018-06-04 20:27:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6674377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/0neType/pseuds/0neType
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sans dies.</p><p>Over and over and <i>over</i> again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	to me, you are

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sweetsinnerchild](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetsinnerchild/gifts).



> For [Sweets](http://sweetsinnerchild.tumblr.com), who needed some encouragement B') I'm uh,,,, sorry that it comes in the form of something this incredibly fucked up hahahh hh hhh,,,,,,,
> 
> please, please, _please_ heed the warnings going into this. (and please do let me know if there's anything you think should be added)
> 
> apologies in advance <3

It’s like watching the world through a layer of static.

Things are fuzzy and unclear, colours brightening and dulling arbitrarily in his line of sight. There’s movement everywhere at once, distracting like a bug that begs to be swatted. It flickers and fades, even as he stands there, motionless and uncomprehending.

There’s static in his ears too.

A pitched buzzing that screeches to a point, blocking out everything else. No other sound, save for that and the too-calm pulse of his own heartbeat.

Static in his vision, static in his hearing, and yet, still, there’s no mistaking the red that pools onto the concrete or the deafening shot that echoes through the air.

Someone is shaking him, shouting at him, pointing and pointing and pointing at the crumpled form on the ground and he sees it, he _sees_ it, but nothing makes any sense. How could it? How can it? It’s a puzzle that even he cannot solve.

And what do they want from him anyway? Can’t they see he’s busy? Can’t they tell that he just needs a few moments to… _process_ the situation?

They move away from him after a while—he doesn’t know exactly how long, can only register that it’s _too_ long by his standards—and rush over to the prone body instead. There’s a few of them swarming around the body. Swarming like flies, he thinks.

Like flies swarm around the dead and decaying. And,

 _oh_.

Oh, that hits a little too close to the mark. Too close for his liking. Because… because, why? Because that’s what this is? He doesn’t know, doesn’t know, it’s still taking him too long to process.

They flip the body onto its back and suddenly, suddenly, suddenly.

The world is in colour again. Crystal clear. The volume comes back on full. And Papyrus is staring. He’s staring. He’s staring at Sans staring back at him with eyes that have begun to go glassy. He’s staring and he’s still not seeing enough, though he sees the red and he hears the shouting all around him.

He thinks he understands now, on some level, on some superficial level.

But all he can really think is, why hasn’t anyone brought Sans bandages yet? Surely they know how long it takes him to heal? After all, Sans never seems to shut up about it. Talking on and on about blood and blood and blood and his blood not clotting like it should. About how he’ll just bleed and continue to bleed longer than most because that’s how his body works. And Sans never shuts up, he never shuts up, he never does except now. He’s not talking now.

He’s still bleeding though.

Still bleeding because that’s how his body works. That’s how it works and he’d explained it to Papyrus once. With long terms and boring science shit that made his stupid fucking smile stretch wide across his face and he talked and talked like he wasn’t talking about how fucked up his health was. And Papyrus knew already, he _knew_ , so he told Sans to shut up.

And now Sans was quiet.

He was quiet and they still hadn’t brought him bandages for his bleeding.

“I’m sorry, Papyrus.” He doesn’t react to the shock of red hair suddenly in his line of vision, doesn’t see it really, doesn’t even register the words. But, somewhere inside, he faintly thinks that he hates that colour; that darkness, that red. It’s an afterthought mostly, but still, it resonates.

“Jesus, fuck, he was a real idiot wasn’t he?” Another voice snickers, and the red mane to his right—Undyne, he remembers, or at least thinks he remembers from somewhere within the thick haze in his head—turns sharply in that direction, “Stupid fucker walked right into it.”

“Shut up,” she hisses, voice cold and unforgiving and Papyrus doesn’t understand _why_ , because… because she’s never liked Sans? She’s never liked him, never cared for him, never gave him much thought at all, really, except to say what she _disliked_ , “He was family.”

And.

That hits.

Somehow, those words, that phrase, that hits more than anything else has. And Papyrus is terrified, _horrified_ , to find that his vision has gone from static to clarity to blurring and blurring and blinking back wetness and—

The voice snorts, “Yeah, like anyone _really_ cared about that useless waste of space.”

And again he is doused and drowning in red. It clouds his visions and drips from his hand and drips from the broken nose of the one that had spoken and drips and drips down their chin as they stare at him with wide, wide eyes. The red of Undyne’s hair seems to drip too as she turns to them in disgust and dismisses them with a glare. She then asks him if he’s alright, if his hand is okay, but Papyrus doesn’t even remember moving, though his hand stings like a reminder and the red there lingers. Lingers and burns, but does not burn in the way the rest of his body does.

He speaks, and his voice sounds like an imitation of itself, doesn’t even sound like him at all, hoarse and unused, “Where’s the ambulance?”

Undyne gives him a pitying look, “Paramedics can’t do shit for the dead, Pap.”

And he nods. He nods because he understands. But he’s still staring at the scene in front of him and he still doesn’t know how he feels and he thinks that, maybe, _maybe_ , this might be shock. He may be in shock and he wonders when things will start to feel like they’re real again.

“You’d be better off calling in a hearse.” Undyne mutters, puts a hand on his shoulder and squeezes it as if to comfort him. But the gesture is lost on him when he still can’t register anything more than the surface of what’s going on. When he still can’t register anything further than Sans laying there on the floor—on the cold, hard, concrete—with his blood leaking out of him in a steady stream.

He absently thinks that that’s got to be bad for his back, laying on the floor like that. Sans isn’t going be happy when he wakes up. Except.

Except.

He’s not _going_ to wake up.

“He’s dead.” Papyrus says the words like he’s testing them.

“Yeah,” Undyne nods firmly, seems to consider something for a moment before speaking again, “He called for you. Before he, uh… went. _Kept_ calling for you, actually.”

His tone is still muted, “I didn’t hear him.”

“Don’t worry,” she laughs; loud and grating, in that rough, sandpaper way of hers, “It was probably just him trying to get one last stupid joke in. Piss you off a little so you’d never forget him.”

“I wouldn’t,” And, _god_ , is that really his voice? He doesn’t see how it could be. He can’t understand why it shakes and trembles. He hears himself speaking as if he’s listening in from another body, “I won’t.”

Undyne stops laughing then. She steels her expression and tightens her grip on his shoulder, grits out between clenched teeth, “Good.”

She turns away from him, lets go and walks over to the side where her people are waiting for instructions, calls back over her shoulder, “You owe him that much at least.”

His heart falls into the pit of his stomach.

Because if Undyne sounds that serious about it, then… she must’ve seen it too. And if Undyne saw it, then it can’t just be his mind playing tricks on him. Then he’s not mistaken. Then it was real; it was _real_ and so the one who should be dead is _him_ and not Sans.

Sans had saved him.

With shaking hands, he touches the front of his abdomen, over the area where it still faintly aches with pain from being shoved forcefully to the side. He wonders if the skin there will bruise, wonders if the bruises will be shaped like his brother’s hands; if that’ll be the last physical proof he’ll ever have that his brother had been real, had existed.

Sans had _saved_ him.

What was the last thing he’d even said to Sans? He can’t remember, can’t even begin to think what it could’ve been. Was it when he’d shouted at him to get up this morning? No, maybe it was when he’d called him useless while he folded laundry before lunch. Or maybe it was when he’d cussed him out in front of everyone right before they’d left?

What had Sans said in response? Had he even said anything back at all? He can’t remember, can’t think, can’t recall.

God, Sans had _saved_ him and Papyrus had let him _die_.

There’s a wrenching in his gut and Papyrus doubles over, heaves onto he ground. He hasn’t eaten much since morning but his body can’t seem to keep anything in and he’s gagging, gagging till he’s gagging on nothing and his stomach is empty of all but bile. The sound of it splatters and echoes and all those present turn around to watch him. He doesn’t care, he doesn’t _care_. He still he feels sick, still feels the heaviness of a lump in his throat that weighs inside him like a reminder of all his sins.

“Boss,” someone calls out to him and, for a moment, his heart jumps—but the sound sinks in and he recognises the lilt as something far softer, far more feminine, “What should we do with the body?”

He wipes his mouth, looks up past the person speaking and to the body still on the floor. There’s no one around it now; no reason for there to be when there’s no longer anything anyone can do. He doesn’t answer, continues to stare ahead. And then finally, _finally_ , he gets his body working long enough to move.

As he staggers—and isn’t that strange? That he staggers when he prides himself on his composure—towards his brother’s body, the room is silent. No one speaks and no one moves. There’s a deafening quiet as he drops to his knees beside him.

When people describe the dead in their books and their poetry, they say it looks like they’re just sleeping.

Papyrus does not agree.

He knows what his brother looks like when he sleeps; has screamed him awake more than enough times to get a good picture of it. His eyes scrunch up weird and his mouth goes lax, falling open and, more often than not, drooling all over his sheets. His body either splays across the entirety of his mattress or—on those days where Sans is quiet and distant—he curls into a little heap, pressing himself up against the wall his bed shares.

This is nothing like that.

Sans lies flat on his back, limbs spread like a ragdoll dropped to the floor. There’s no steady rise and fall to his chest like there is when he’s sleeping and no sound of a low, tired snore. His head lolls slightly to the right, his eyes still half open. Papyrus finds that he can’t look too long at that gaze that stares into nothing. The wrongness of it makes his stomach turn.

Sans is dead.

Sans is dead but he’s still bleeding and Papyrus has already thrown up but he wants to vomit.

This is wrong.

This is all wrong.

This situation is unacceptable and Papyrus has never been one to welcome anything less than perfection.

It shouldn’t be like this—it _shouldn’t_ —and Papyrus may be a stranger to grief but he’s more than familiar with anger. He clenches his jaw and grinds his teeth and lets the hot, well-worn feeling burn through him. There’s something to be said for how grounded the fury makes him.

Sans is dead.

Sans is dead but Papyrus refuses the very notion.

He refuses.

So, instead,

he reaches out for his brother, and

 

_the world shifts around him._

**Author's Note:**

> "But it refused."
> 
> The writing in this chapter is about as mixed up, hard to parse and confusing as this is gonna get. It was done mainly to establish Papyrus's state of mind. The chapters after this should be easier to read—
> 
> —well, easier to read writing style-wise anyway. The content itself may not be as forgiving.


End file.
